Nicole

The reality is that I do not have enough money to appease women who want to breed. I have very grudgingly accepted this reality. My date with Nicole was a product of my new dating agenda. I would no longer seek women who wanted children, and in fact I now lie in my profile and no longer designate that I want children. Now I only seek women who have no desire for children I don’t know why they don’t want children. Maybe they are selfish, do not see the beauty of children, are too old to conceive .. who knows? … but this is what I’m stuck with.

Nicole is one of the rare women who solicited me. This is what she wrote:

I thought your profile and posts were very entertaining. It is refreshing to see someone state he is sloppy and lazy. Sometimes I wonder, who are these strange people constantly kayaking and hiking and switching between jeans and a tux. There seems to be a lot of tux-wearing going on when nobody is looking. I rarely meet these people in real life. I must admit that I finally succumbed to the pressure myself (nobody seemed interested in me when I admitted I watch reality tv) and changed my original profile today into the one I've posted now, but I could not bring myself to write "little black dress" or "partner in crime" or "..all that Boston has to offer." Just couldn't do it.

So are you having any luck on this website? I have not done this in awhile and am finding it harder than I remember.

Nicole

I wrote her back:

 

Hi Nicole,

I don't read men's profiles, but women also like to boast their versatility in being able to go from formal to casual clothing almost instantaneously. There is the "partner in crime" stand by, and my personal favorite, "I see the glass as half full." I love the women who are looking for men to fly off to Paris on a whim for the weekend. It's a severely recessed economy. Shouldn't these people be putting all that traveling money into an emergency fund?

I'm having a lot of luck on Okay Cupid as evidenced by the fact that you wrote me. Would you like to meet for coffee or a drink?

-Dickie

I saw Nicole in a Starbucks inside of a Barnes & Nobles coffee shop in Braintree. I took my 5 mg of Valium in order to survive the drive as per orders of my medicine man.

Nicole was 43 years old. She looked her age. While she was not ugly she was physically very unimpressive. She might have subtracted a little from her height also, but perhaps her clogs made her appear taller.

What I couldn’t get over was the big gulp she carried with her. She said it was diet Pepsi. She assured me it wasn’t spiked. This was a joke. She was a lame joker. I said I didn’t care if it was spiked, which was the truth. But I could not get over that big gulp. I couldn’t see what the big gulp cup was. She had napkins around the big gulp cup. I’m not sure why. To sop up the condensation? Who knows? I asked her if she wanted anything. She said no, she had her diet Pepsi. “Are you sure? I can buy you a cup of coffee? Something to eat?” “No.” she said. “I’m fine.” She wasn’t going to actually sit down in that place without ordering anything and suck on a big gulp? This isn’t a bus depot. It’s Starbucks inside of a Barnes & Nobles.

This was one of those dates where the topic of conversation is dating. And it wasn’t my idea. I never like to talk about dating on dates. Nicole had some astute observations about dating and people. She wasn’t as sophisticated as me, but I saw a real potential for creative thought, observation, and insight. She seemed to view the world from the unique perspective of an outsider just as me. I believe I was dealing with someone unique and interesting yet this woman was wearing me down with her progressive onslaught of questions. “How long have you dated?” “Do you like dating?” “How often do you date?” “What is the worst date you’ve ever had?” She even asked me if she was asking me too many questions. I of course denied this. She said at one point, one of her dates told her that she was too intense and that she should stop asking him questions. She claimed she was a socialist, but I doubt if she had ever even read Marx. She seemed to have a very trivial understanding of politics.

Maybe an hour, hour and a half into the date I took a bathroom break and ordered some gruesome tasting lemonade/strawberry concoction from Starbucks. So many dates have ended abruptly after I’ve drank something from Starbucks that made me ill. I asked her again if I could buy her something. No. She was fine. She held up her big gulp.

She started making her move. She started talking about how she didn’t like friends. She was “anti-social.” She wasn’t into that. She liked to be with one person. I had no problem with this. She said that she was looking for someone who was financially independent. (Socialist my ass!) She was officially axed as a potential mate right there. I didn’t meet her criteria of financial independence. Why had she not stated this on her profile and saved me a lot of trouble? And then she said, “I hate debt. How do you feel about debt?” I didn’t know how to answer this. She helped me. She said, “If I was with a woman who had acquired a lot of debt, how would you feel about paying her bills?” I told her “I don’t have any money.” She said, “Well, hypothetically.” I had no idea how to answer the question and my mind was too mushy to think. The Starbucks concoction was officially make my stomach queasy. She had mentally exhausted me. I said I had to go.

I hugged her. Our cars were parked side by side in the back of the lot. We walked to our cars together. Her car was not a car, it was the biggest SUV I have ever seen. What the fuck was she doing with that thing, using it to haul bodies?

Nicole wanted her cake and eat it to. She wanted someone cool like me who rejected sameness and cliché and triteness yet she wanted that person to be a part of the animal factory. Can you have both? I’m not sure. If I were part of the animal factory I’m sure I would be an ordinary boring asshole like everyone else, like all the boring men she complained about that she dates and sees on personals. It’s being apart from the factory that gives me the qualities that she was attracted to. And she was attracted to me. I had no doubt about that. Women want too much. She is 43 years old. She is not beautiful. What does she think she is going to find?